Adding New Assemblies to a Project

InstallShield 11 Universal

A reference to new assemblies, which are those that do not exist in the Assembly Gallery, can be added to a Universal Installer project in the Assemblies or Installation Design view. In an RPM Installer project, they can only be added in the Assemblies view. Instructions for both are provided below.

Universal does not support multiple side-by-side installs of a single assembly within a single product or suite. It is an error condition at both build and run times for a single product or Dynamic Suite to require a specific assembly in more than one location on the target system. For more information, see Collaboration/Side-by-Side Assemblies.

The ability to include information about an assembly that is not located in the Assembly Gallery is helpful when two developers are simultaneously working on projects: one is working on the project that will be built as an assembly, and the other is working on the project that will be built as the product that will reference that assembly. Another example would be when you are building a project that will install a product that needs to reference an assembly that was installed by another vendor. In both cases, the details about the referenced assembly need to be communicated to the developer who is working on the product project so that the properties of the new assembly are set correctly.

If the product project is built before the referenced assembly actually exists in the specified Assembly Gallery location, error messages will be received, but the project will still build successfully.

An assembly can be added to either a feature or the product in a Universal Installer project. When added to a feature, the assembly is only included in or referenced by the installation of the product if the end user chooses to install that feature. When it is added directly to the product, however, the assembly is included in the installation or referenced by the product regardless of which features the end user decides to install.

Assemblies are added to a Universal Dynamic Suite after the suite has been built. See Adding Assemblies to a Dynamic Suite for instructions.

When an assembly is added to a project, it is added as a requirement of that feature or the product. A reference to the assembly is what is included in the project—the assembly.dat file is only included in the build configuration(s) you specify, and installed on the target machine if you specify it to be installed (see Setting New Assembly Properties/Location property). Therefore, when an assembly is shared by multiple products, the assembly itself only needs to be installed once on the target machine by one product project. The other products that access that assembly need to only contain a reference to it in their project. The assembly remains installed on the target machine until all of the products that require it have been uninstalled—the assembly is uninstalled along with the last product that required it.

To add a new assembly to a project in the Assemblies view:

1. Select the Assemblies view. A list of the built assemblies that are in the Assembly Gallery displays in the Explorer window.
2. Click New. A new assembly is added to the Explorer window, and its properties display with default values in the Properties window.
3. Select whether to associate the assembly with a feature or the product:
   
   • To associate the assembly with a feature (Universal Installer projects only)—At the top of the Properties window, click the check box next to the feature with which you want to associate this assembly.
   • To associate the assembly with the product—At the top of the Properties window, click the check box next to the product at the very top of the tree.
4. Set the properties of the assembly.

To add a new assembly to a project in the Installation Design view (Universal Installer projects only):

1. Select the Installation Design view. The current product tree displays in the Explorer window, and the properties of the root product display in the Properties window.
2. To associate the new assembly with a feature, select that feature from the product tree in the Explorer window.
   
   --OR--
   
   To associate the new assembly directly with the product, select the root product at the top of the product tree in the Explorer window.
3. Click Insert, and then select Create New Reference. A new assembly reference is added to the product tree, and its properties display with default values in the Properties window.
4. Set the properties of the new assembly reference.

See Also

Adding Existing Assemblies to a Project
Creating a Project to be Built as an Assembly